By Prentiss Findlay
The Post and Courier

PORT WENTWORTH, Ga. — When Hugo Burbage of Jedburg was seriously burned by hot grease while frying fish, his family was surprised to learn that he had to be flown by helicopter from Trident Regional Medical Center in North Charleston to Augusta for treatment at Doctors Hospital.

The trip was necessary because the Medical University of South Carolina shut its 10-bed adult burn unit the month before Burbage's 2002 accident. His mother, Sharon Burbage, still wonders why MUSC shuttered the facility. "As big an area as we are and as many factories and plants that we have, I don't understand why we closed it down," she said.

Being farther away from home in another state made the ordeal of having a family member in the hospital that much harder, she said. Hugo Burbage, 40, was at the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital for a week, and had to return twice for surgery to repair the damage to his face and left side, she said. From Jedburg to Augusta is about 150 miles, while the trip to Charleston is about 30 miles, she said. "It's very expensive and you have to eat out," she said.

When the MUSC adult burn unit closed, most of the state's burn patients went to the Doctors Hospital center, which serves a region that includes South Carolina and Georgia. Doctors Hospital gets hundreds of South Carolina burn patients each year.

On Feb. 7, the center was put to the test when 20 workers from the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Ga., were rushed to Augusta after an explosion at the plant. One worker, Michael Kelly Fields, 40, died early Thursday at the burn center, spokeswoman Beth Frits said. Sixteen other workers remained hospitalized there, 14 of them in critical condition, she said. Seven other people have been found dead in the rubble at the plant, and one worker remained missing.

Dozens of firefighters continued to battle the blaze Thursday. Emergency crews were able to snuff out the fire at the plant's main building Wednesday, but the blaze persisted at the refinery's 80-foot silos, The Associated Press reported.

Summerville Fire Department Capt. Kevin Miller said he got excellent care at the Doctors Hospital burn unit, but it was tough on his family while he was hospitalized for three weeks in late 2006. He didn't want his two young kids to see him in the hospital, and his wife didn't want to leave the kids at home.

"It was difficult. It would have made things a lot easier if that unit was open. I think it's very important to have something like that here," Miller said. He was injured while burning a pile of limbs and debris, but he has made a full recovery. He had to make about eight trips to the Augusta hospital for outpatient care. In September, the Doctors Hospital burn unit opened an outpatient clinic at Trident Regional Medical Center, which means burn patients hospitalized in Augusta can get their follow-up care in North Charleston.

Former state Rep. John Graham Altman campaigned to keep the MUSC burn center open in 2002. "I've been thinking about it since the sugar refinery fire," he said. "It still doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I don't want to see them have to travel to Augusta. I would hope that the Legislature could take another look at this," Altman said.

Police Chaplain Rob Dewey said the Imperial Sugar explosion cast a spotlight on South Carolina's lack of an adult burn center. "We have a wonderful hospital in MUSC, but I question why someone who is seriously burned has to be taken care of in Augusta and we can't care for them. I wonder what the issues are that we can't get the burn unit open here," Dewey said.

The reasons a burn center can't re-open at MUSC are similar to why the 10-bed center was closed in June 2002, said Megan Fink, a spokeswoman in the media relations department. Recruiting physician specialists to treat adult burn patients is difficult because there are only a few trained nationally and they are usually attracted to larger centers, she said. The Joseph M. Still Burn Center has 59 beds.

"A burn center is an expensive operation to run, requiring specialized equipment and staffing. Without government funding, it is not cost-effective for the university to maintain," she said. MUSC is confident that patients referred to the Still Burn Center receive high quality care, she said.

It would require about $7 million to re-open the MUSC burn unit as well as political support all the way up to the governor's office, according to a report issued in 2003.

"It's not an issue that we've examined yet. We have to see the specifics of a proposal," said Joel Sawyer, spokesman for Gov. Mark Sanford.

Another major factor is that hospitals throughout the state would have to transfer patients to Charleston instead of Augusta. The Augusta burn center attracted patients from South Carolina long before MUSC's burn center shut down, officials said.

"Even when our center was open patients from the Midlands and Upstate were often transferred to one of those neighboring centers (Augusta or Charlotte)," Fink said.